Courtesy photo
Reebok has picked the Innovation and Design Building in South Boston as its new home with plans to relocate its 700-employee corporate workforce from Canton next fall.
While its 60-acre Royall Street headquarters is shrouded behind a stand of evergreens and protected by a security gatehouse, the Adidas subsidiary’s new home will have a more open-door approach. A 1-mile track and café will be open to the public. There also will be an 8,000-square-foot Reebok FitHub store, similar to retail spaces at two competitors that opened distinctive new headquarters at high-profile gateways to Boston last year, New Balance and Converse.
“Our goal is to not only provide a great environment for our employees, but for the people of Boston as well,” Reebok President Matt O’Toole said in a statement. “We believe in the power of community – and more specifically the power of community fitness.”
Reebok will join a burgeoning creative economy scene at the 1.3-million-square-foot former Army warehouse in the Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park.
Atlanta-based Jamestown acquired the lease for the IDB, which is owned by the Economic Development Industrial Corp. of Boston, in 2013. Since then, it’s landed a succession of new tenants ranging from tech startups to Autodesk, the publisher of CAD software, which relocated from Waltham to a new 70,000-square-foot East Coast headquarters at the IDB in October.
A 35,000-square-foot shared makerspace for local craftspeople, The Makers Guild at IDB, that opened in 2015, also factored into Reebok’s decision. The company said it plans to collaborate with tenants in the makers guild, which has attracted woodworkers, bicycle makers and a manufacturer of tile mosaics for hotels and resorts.
Like the Canton headquarters – which include a basketball court, outdoor track and playing fields – the Boston offices will have a full complement of fitness-focused amenities.
The Drydock Avenue complex will include a two-story, 30,000-square-foot gym, fitness studios, a boxing ring, personal trainers, dieticians, massage therapists and dieticians, Reebok said.
